Sweeties, Pies and Ginger

Since I'm off ill, I've been trying to get my dual boot Linux/Windows box working. Firstly I thought I have a go at trying to get Grub to boot Windows XP, which is running on a second hard drive. Grub was throwing the following error:

Booting 'Microsoft Windows XP Pro'
root (hd1,0)
    Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x7
...

After much reading of websites at work during the week I found the answer. Well, I didn't find the answer, but I found pointers to what might be wrong, so I tried something out and it worked. Evidently if Windows isn't on the first disk Grub throws this error, so you have to map the disks so Grub thinks it's on the first disk. So you need to change the windows entry in your Grub configuration (/boot/grub/menu.lst) from:

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/hdb1
title           Microsoft Windows XP Professional
root            (hd1,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader     +1

To this:

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/hdb1
title           Microsoft Windows XP Professional
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
root            (hd1,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader     +1

Selecting XP from the boot menu after doing this worked a treat and I now have a working dual boot machine. This is making life just a bit easier as I now don't have to switch hard drive cables if I want to read my email.